1. Field of the Application
The application relates to a method for setting addresses of slave devices in a communication network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A communication system, e.g., a communication system compliant to Modbus specifications, includes a master device and one or multiple slave devices. In the Modbus communication system, in each communication, the master device initiatively sends a message and then a target slave device responses. More specifically, only one communication can be performed at a time. In the event of two or multiple slave devices having the same address, these slave devices simultaneously return data to the master device to lead to erroneous returned data and thus a communication failure. Such occurrence is referred as a communication collision.
For communication, the master device sets addresses of the slave devices, generally by manual or automatic means. In manual setting, operating staff manually sets an address for each of the slave devices. However, in communication collision, the operating staff first connects one of the slave devices involved in the communication collision to the master device and modifies the address of the connected slave device. Thus, the operating staff may spend a substantial amount of time to solve the communication collision if the communication collision involves a large number of slave devices.
The communication collision may also be solved by automatic means. Yet, it remains a target of industrialists to provide a solution for further reducing a search time for finding the slave devices involved in the communication collision.